"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) confirmed Thursday that she will seek the chairmanship of the Senate Budget Committee next year but told The Hill that she cannot commit to doing a budget.
This opens up the possibility that Senate Democrats will avoiding passing a budget resolution for the fourth year in a row.
The last time the Senate passed a standalone budget resolution was in 2009.

Also, Ron Paul’s farewell speech is great. Yet I think I can state my problem with Ron Paul now. Paul makes a purely intellectual pitch. Foreign policy is not as clean as a chess game. Paul arrives at an idealism as ungrounded as that of the Socialists. Which is not to endorse the foreign policy adventurism, either. I’m after some (perhaps equally nebulous) mid-point between the two.

At least the Democrats are now openly admitting that they don’t intend to do the jobs they’re trying to get.

WRT Ron Paul…Foreign policy is the biggest disagreement I have with the typical libertarian. Economically and on things like civil liberties, I tend to agree with them for moral and pragmatic reasons.

Some of the pragmatism comes from having a well ordered society. Obviously, once you get out to dealing with other countries, you leave that world entirely, and it requires a different approach. While I want strong rule of law domestically, I’m pretty comfortable having foreigners (at least those who choose not to play nicely with us) guessing about whether we’ll flatten their country.

Mitt Romney loosing has nothing to do with his inability to adopt and promote a strong pro-freedom position that would motivate Ron Paul supporters and Libertarian Party members to vote for him, nothing at all. Yea… that’s the ticket.

Paul is fond of saying we prospered for 150 years without being the world’s policeman. True enough – but what he conveniently omits from that formula is that during those years the open seas were guaranteed by the Royal Navy.

We didn’t ask for the role of the world’s great superpower, but it is ours and anyone who believes the world will be safe and secure if we shirk the responsibility is a fool, period.

“Yet I think I can state my problem with Ron Paul now. Paul makes a purely intellectual pitch. Foreign policy is not as clean as a chess game. Paul arrives at an idealism as ungrounded as that of the Socialists. Which is not to endorse the foreign policy adventurism, either. I’m after some (perhaps equally nebulous) mid-point between the two.”

My position exactly. Paul’s view on the military and foreign policy is about the same as that of the far left. He assumes that whenever we are attacked it was because we deserved it — the “blowback” theory. Still, I do not think we should be trying to make democracies out of Muslim hell-holes. It can’t be done.

If patrolling the seas were all that you asked for I think I could live with that. The problem is when the US Navy is used to deliver troops for a task that is ill defined and being ill defined takes much more money and lives to accomplish than if the duopoly party simply declared war on X.

The United States will vigorously defend it’s rights as a sovereign country and the vital interests of its allies. It will do so without apology and with absolute certitude of accomplishing a distinct *military* mission whenever and wherever it is necessary. Military options are a last resort. But they will not be a ‘non-resort.’

The United States will NOT make promises to spend billions of dollars and precious lives of our own service men in open-ended experiments in turning hostile regimes into Westernized Democracies. The United States Military will not be used in civilian missions of nation-building. Nor will it consider the security of enemy foreign citizens an interest worthy of spending our own lives, unless there is a *vital* interest at stake.

That is, we hereby debunk Colin Powell’s foolish “We broke it, We bought it” foreign policy. We do not replace one Vietnam with ten. We fight a war with distinct military objectives. We accomplish them. And we leave. If the enemy is foolish enough to make us return, we ensure they are beat down again. And leave.

“He assumes that whenever we are attacked it was because we deserved it — the “blowback” theory.”

Blowback theory doesn’t focus on whether party B deserved being attacked by party A. It only states that it is a good idea to attempt to understand the reason why party A attacked in the first place.

Quartermaster November 16th, 2012 @ 7:02 pm

They don’t have to “cater” to them, but they do have show respect. That’s something the “screaming idiot” caucus in the GOP has real trouble doing. So wet get another Dole, McAmnesty or Mittens every 4 years and go down to defeat.

There are things that Paul supports that I disagree with. But I don’t treat them as you or Mittens did. There are a lot of Libertarians that held their noses, as did I, and voted for Mittens.

Quartermaster November 16th, 2012 @ 7:11 pm

Actually, he is different than the far left. The far left can not see any reason to ever declare war. Paul can.

There is a lot of BS floating around about Paul, but if people would listen to what he actually says, they will find he is a much different person than people have been led to believe.

As I have said before, I’m no Paul fan, but I would take him as President before I’d take any faux-conservative Neocon ready to get us into a shooting war at the drop of a hat. I can remember when it was the GOP that avoided such things, and the Dims were hot to intervene anywhere and everywhere we had no real interest at stake.

We di have good reason to go into Korea and Vietnam. The geopolitical situation almost demanded we go to set limits on the Soviets and insure they could not make war pay. After Ivan fell, we should have been far more judicious on where we started shooting and bombing. Then, when you do, go in, break everything, kill much of their adult male population, hand the keys to someone new, and tell them they don’t want us to come back. Strength is one thing the ITs (Islamic Terrorists) understand. We have trashed about and shown weakness instead. That will always bring blowback.

Quartermaster November 16th, 2012 @ 7:14 pm

By the way Smitty – they all start as idealists. It’s just a matter of time before they start really looking at how the world actually works. Some, like Obama, never grow up. Paul realizes a lot more than people realize because he doesn’t express it very well.

SDN November 16th, 2012 @ 7:23 pm

Thane, my foreign policy owes a lot more to Rudyard Kipling than blowback theory, and history before the rise of the tranzis suggests I’m right:

Then a silence came to the river,
A hush fell over the shore,
And Bohs that were brave departed,
And Sniders squibbed no more;
For the foreigner said
That an American’s head
Must be paid for with heads five-score.

It can be done, it’s just that we don’t have the will to do it the way it must be done, as was done in Germany and Japan.

What was bone-headed was the notion of having them ramp up to western democracy while rebuilding and recovering at the same time. Screw that. You put a government in place, and run it for them until it runs on its own. That formula has worked for thousands of years.

The Paulist version of foreign policy is based on an idealism that is in fact a corruption of what George Washington meant by “foreign entanglements” and Ike’s warning about the M/I complex.

1) We should never give up logistical superiority.

2) When you have to use it, be sure the job is finished. That means not having to go back in a few years because of hand-wringing over nation building and collateral damage. You end the immediate threat, cram a new government down their throats, and threaten them with annihilation if they don’t follow it.

3) Never spend a soldier’s life on decisions based on politics back home. If the generals and admirals don’t protect the soldiers from that corruption, they should be replaced.

Coulter76 November 16th, 2012 @ 10:13 pm

My biggest problem with Ron Paul are his followers, but I do believe conservatives for some strange reason went out of their way to go after him. I love that someone like Lierberman is celebrated by conservatives over the Iraq War despite voting for ObamaCare and generally being and down the line liberal.

The GOP of the future will probably look a lot like Ron Paul, and he’ll probably be looked at as a figure like Goldwater.